LW struck me as a shallow yuppie, but what the hell. I was a navy brat whose family moved to a small central California town (with a big Navy base) just in time to start high school about 30 years ago now. By then I'd fallen so deep into social anxiety that although I spent four years there, I made no genuine friends and have never had any desire to attend any reunions, especially as I now live across the continent. In any case, I feel pretty certain that if I did go, no one else I might meet there would even remember me unless they happened to know me through my much more gregarious slightly younger brother who was one grade behind me. He has attended reunions with both his first and second wives (both of whom attended the same high school), and apparently they had a good time. I found out from him that one of my classmates, one who I was at least acquainted with, was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11 and now a highway in that small town has been named after him.

In my case, I was too overcome by social anxiety, as a teenager and even now up to my 40s to ask women for sex. I lost my virginity at age 19 to a 32 year old woman, married with kids, who I later discovered but not to my genuine surprise was also carrying on an affair with my father who had introduced her to me and, I'm sure, put her up to "deflowering" me. Not that I ever talked to my dad about my sex life or lack thereof, as, to be honest, we weren't all that close, but although I am the oldest of 3 sons in my family, in high school I was very aloof, and didn't have any friends, male or female. I did get along with my mother fairly well, but I never really talked with her about my problems either, and in any case she was falling deep into her own troubles with depression, loneliness and alcoholism at the time.

I do have a few good friends now, of both sexes, but my anxiety still derails my feeble attempts at romance. I have had sex a few more times, with 3 other women, but I've never actually achieved orgasm during sex, not counting masturbation. Usually, after a half hour or longer, I finally faked an orgasm because I felt it was getting ridiculous. And while admittedly I have had ambiguous fantasies, I have no doubts at all about my sexual inclinations -- I've only ever been sexually attracted to women.

Of course, I never discussed my apparent incapacity to achieve orgasm during sex with any of my partners because I've never been in a lasting relationship and only one of those women expressed romantic interest in me, but we lived too far apart and for other reasons nothing came of our time together.

I realize that my situation makes me a bit of a weirdo and if I had a lot more spare financial assets I'd be in regular therapy and taking various drugs to overcome my absurd anxieties. At the suggestion of a high school counselor, I was sent to a psychiatrist and had regular sessions with the school psychologist when I was 16 and 17, but afterwards I only tried therapy again after a serious bout of depression two years ago. That and zoloft got me out of that hurdle, but I've yet to overcome the fears that tend to keep me isolated.

Yesterday, I spent some time with a friend of mine, a divorced man in his early 50s, and his 21 year old son, Chad, who seems normal, but on closer inspection is even more socially crippled by anxiety than I was at that age. Since graduating from high school, Chad has done nothing on his own initiative -- never gotten a driver's license (he lives in a big southern city with inadequate public transportation); never attended or applied to attend college; never tried to get a job; and apparently has no friends and seldom does anything with his time other than watch tv or fish, which at least gets him out of the house. My friend did seek psychiatric help for Chad when he was still in high school, but once Chad turned 18 he was no longer covered by insurance and my friend can't afford to continue to pay for the therapy and medication. It's sad and troubling for me as I can't honestly say that I've fully conquered my own anxieties let alone provide useful advice to either my friend or Chad. All I can really do is sympathize, which isn't quite enough.